Alldocube M8 Review

22 January 2019, 18:12:45

Alldocube replaced the Cube brand a while ago. Inheriting several years of experience and expertise, Alldocube looks quite ambitious to find its place under the sun as long as it concerns the tablets market. It has definitely grabbed the attention with the Alldocube X, which is a feature-packed tablet that costs $269. But while this model is still finding its way to the market, Alldocube has another attractive offer to people shopping for a tablet - the 4G Alldocube M8 that can be obtained for as low as $125. So read on, if you're interested in a cheap 4G tablet with a deca-core CPU and a 5500 mAh battery.

Specifications overview and Unboxing

Alldocube M8 has an 8-inch OGS IPS display with a resolution of 1980 x 1200 pixels. It is powered by a 5500 mAh battery paired with a 5V/2A fast charger. One of the most prominent specs of the model is its chipset. The device is based on the 20nm MediaTek Helio X27 (MT6797X) system-on-chip. It houses a deca-core CPU with 2x 2.6GHz Cortex-A72 cores, 4x 2GHz Cortex-A53 cores and 4x 1.6GHz Cortex-A53 cores. The graphics are handled by a four-core Mali-T880 GPU clocked at 875MHz. There are 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM on board (double-channel, clocked at 800MHz) and 32GB of eMMC storage on board that can be expanded with up to 128GB. Alldocube M8 is equipped with a 5MP OmniVision OV5648 rear camera with a LED flash. This sensor has been often used by tablets and budget smartphones 4-5 years ago. The camera takes photos with a resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels and 1080p videos at 15 fps. For the selfie snapper on the front, the manufacturer uses a 2MP GalaxyCore GC2385 sensor. It shoots photos with a resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels and 480p videos at 30 fps interpolated to 1080p. Alldocube M8 is equipped with a Micro-USB 2.0 port with OTG support, 3.5 mm jack, and three separate slots - two for Micro-SIM cards and one for a microSD card. The M8 supports LTE Cat. 6 speeds, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS and GLONASS. The tablet has a single, bottom-firing speaker with an independent amplifier. It is not very loud and lacks some depth and treble but does offer a certain enjoyment of listening to music from it. As long as it concerns the sensors, the model has only one of them - the accelerometer. There's no a proximity/ambient light one. The full AllDocube M8 specifications can be found here.
Alldocube M8 arrives in a big rectangular box in black. The box has a graphic decoration and has the brand's name, logo and website imprinted on it. On the back of the box, there's information about the main features and specifications of the model. Inside, the table lies on top of a number of boxes only two of which are intended for accessories - the Micro-USB data cable and charger. However, the charger was placed outside the box. We got a confirmation from Alldocube that this is how they ship all M8 units because the charger cannot fit in the standard box for it. There's a short user manual as well.

Design overview

Alldocube M8 has a classic appearance for a mid-range tablet. It combines aluminium alloy for the frame with plastic for its back. The protective glass on the front is of unknown manufacturer. The device is available in black colour only. For the past 5 years, there have been only 34 tablets in the market with an 8-8.4-inch display and a 5000-5500 mAh battery. Compared to all those models, the M8 has an above-average width of 215 mm. At the same time, it is one of the shortest tablets with a height of 122.9 mm. Moreover, it is also quite thin with a waistline of 8.48 mm that's below average for a tablet of that display and battery size class. Finally, the M8 seems to have an average weight, which measures 345 grammes.
The front of the device is taken mostly by the display with huge bezels, very thick chin and even thicker forehead. The latter houses the front-facing camera only. No proximity sensor and no earpiece. The chin is bare and the navigation is on-screen only. The good thing is that the navigation bar can be hidden. On the back of the device, you will see the main camera placed in the top left part. The top plate there can be removed to give access to the two Micro-SIM slot and the third slot which is used for a microSD card.
The top frame of the model houses a 3.5 mm jack and a Micro-USB 2.0 port. The bottom one is where you'll see the speaker grille for the single, bottom-firing speaker. The Power and Volume buttons are placed on the right frame along with a hole for reset. The left frame is bare.

Display

Alldocube M8 is built around an 8-inch OGS IPS display with a resolution of 1980 x 1200 pixels. OGS stands for one-glass solution panels which usually have a layer of touch-sensitive electrodes placed directly on the glass layer of the LCD panel. It is then covered with a thin insulating layer and the second layer of electrodes is added after that. All this is covered with a polarizing layer followed by a cover glass. According to the manufacturer, the screen adopts the following IC model - GSL3670. The CIE diagram unveils a colour space coverage that is only slightly higher than 50% of the sRGB colour space. The display panel has a traditional vertical striped RGB subpixel arrangement. Our measurements showed a maximum white luminance of 297 cd/m2 and a minimum white luminance of 10.5 cd/m2. The temperature of the white point is around 8200 K. If you switch on the Eye Comfort mode from the Quick Settings, you get a more acceptable temperature of the white point - 5500 K but with lower brightness - (207 cd/m2 max and 7.7 cd/m2 min). The second page of the Quick Settings offers a Reading Mode toggle, which switches to an all-black-and-white UI that resembles paper.

Software and connectivity

Alldocube M8 runs on Android 8.0 Oreo which offers an almost stock experience. You get all the usual Android Oreo features such as desktop shortcuts, notification dots, etc. The Task Manager tiles the apps vertically and supports split-screen mode. The Widgets menu offers a choice of wallpapers, widgets and several home screen settings, including toggles for the Google App and notification dots. The tablet arrives with a minimum set of Google and standard Android applications. The first group includes Calendar, Chrome, Drive, Duo, Gmail, Google App, Hangouts (now obsolete), Maps, Photos, Play Music, Play Store, YouTube. The standard Android apps include Browser, Calculator, Camera, Clock, Contacts, Downloads, File Manager, FM Radio, Gallery, Messenger, Phone, Sound Recorder.

The wireless connectivity options of the model include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 4.2. The tablet also arrives with two Micro-SIM card slots. The main SIM card supports the following networks bands: 2G GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), 3G W-CDMA (850, 900, 1700, 1900, 2100 MHz), 4G LTE (B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B7, B8, B12, B17, B20, B28, B38, B39, B40, B41). The second SIM card supports 2G GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), 2.5G CDMA B0, 3G W-CDMA (850, 900, 1700, 1900, 2100 MHz). LTE speeds are Cat. 6 ones. The two Micro-SIM cards are joined by an independent microSD card slot. All three are placed under the top small hood on the back of the handset. Thus you don't have to compromise on using two SIM cards and more memory simultaneously. The tablet supports SIM-free GPS, GLONASS and Beidou. Our review unit has managed to detect a good number from both GPS and GLONASS satellites as well as a limited number of Beidou ones with an excellent accuracy of up to 2 meters.

Performance

Alldocube M8 is based on a MediaTek Helio X27 chipset manufactured after the 20nm process. It is actually a modification of the MT6797 SoC with an X at the end. This is an upper-mid-range system-on-chip with a deca-core CPU. It consists of 2x 2.6GHz Cortex-A72 cores, 4x 2GHz Cortex-A53 cores and 4x 1.6GHz Cortex-A53 cores. The four-core Mali-T880 GPU clocked at 875MHz is responsible for the graphics department. There are 3GB of double-channel LPDDR3 RAM onboard clocked at 800MHz and 32GB of eMMC storage on board that can be expanded with up to 128GB. Of those 32GB, 25GB are available to the user. In addition, the Androbench and PCMark Storage test show that the integrated memory is not very fast. The benchmark results of the Helio X27 powering our review unit are slightly higher than average for this chipset which can be easily compared with the Snapdragon 652, Snapdragon 636, Helio X25, and Helio X23.

AnTuTu v6.x.x - Overall score

Elephone U Pro

115902 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

Xiaomi Mi Note 3

114978 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

Xiaomi Mi A2

111529 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

UMIDIGI Z2 Pro

110465 (MediaTek Helio P60 (MT6771))

Xiaomi Mi 5 Standard Edition

108347 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996)

Ulefone Armor 6

104691 (MediaTek Helio P60 (MT6771))

Nokia X5

101304 (MediaTek Helio P60 (MT6771))

Meizu Pro 6

101157 (MediaTek Helio X25 (MT6797T))

UMIDIGI F1

100900 (MediaTek Helio P60 (MT6771V))

UMIDIGI Z Pro

99241 (MediaTek Helio X27 (MT6797X))

Alldocube M8

97517 (MediaTek Helio X27 (MT6797X))

Elephone S7 Special Edition

96575 (MediaTek Helio X25 (MT6797T))

Nokia X6

94597 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 636)

Vernee Apollo Lite

93030 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797))

Vernee Apollo

92769 (MediaTek Helio X25 (MT6797T))

Zopo Speed 8

92644 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797))

LeEco Le 2

92374 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797))

Xiaomi Redmi Pro Standard Edition

87390 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797))

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 16GB

84631 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797))

nubia Z17 mini Standard Edition

84003 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 MSM8976)

Coolpad Cool1

81943 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 MSM8976)

AnTuTu v7.x.x - Overall score

Xiaomi Mi Note 3

139515 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

Xiaomi Redmi Note 7

138023 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

Elephone U Pro

137904 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

UMIDIGI Z2 Pro

137342 (MediaTek Helio P60 (MT6771))

UMIDIGI F1

137340 (MediaTek Helio P60 (MT6771V))

Ulefone Armor 6

133864 (MediaTek Helio P60 (MT6771))

Xiaomi Mi A2

133682 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

Nokia X5

130614 (MediaTek Helio P60 (MT6771))

Nokia X6

115859 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 636)

Alldocube X

105853 (MediaTek MT8176)

Alldocube M8

101343 (MediaTek Helio X27 (MT6797X))

Ulefone Armor 3

94726 (MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763T))

Cubot X19

94052 (MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763T))

Cubot Power

93598 (MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763T))

Doogee S80

93456 (MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763T))

Oukitel U23

93281 (MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763V))

Cubot King Kong 3

92398 (MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763T))

Doogee S50

86345 (MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763T))

UMIDIGI One Max

84829 (MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763V))

UMIDIGI Z2 Special Edition

84814 (MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763V))

UMIDIGI Z2

84806 (MediaTek Helio P23 (MT6763V))

Geekbench - Single-core

Vernee Apollo Lite

1828 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797))

Xiaomi Mi MIX

1821 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 MSM8996 Pro)

Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus

1817 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 MSM8996 Pro)

LeEco Le X920

1803 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996)

LeEco Le Pro 3 Elite

1789 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996)

Vernee Apollo

1755 (MediaTek Helio X25 (MT6797T))

Zopo Speed 8

1738 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797))

Elephone S7 Special Edition

1729 (MediaTek Helio X25 (MT6797T))

ZUK Z2

1721 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996)

Xiaomi Mi 5s

1689 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 MSM8996 Pro)

Alldocube M8

1656 (MediaTek Helio X27 (MT6797X))

Xiaomi Mi A2

1645 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite

1642 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

Xiaomi Redmi Note 7

1642 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

Elephone U Pro

1635 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

Alldocube X

1631 (MediaTek MT8176)

Smartisan Nut Pro 2

1629 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

UMIDIGI Z Pro

1616 (MediaTek Helio X27 (MT6797X))

Xiaomi Mi Note 3

1608 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus)

Xiaomi Redmi Pro Standard Edition

1571 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797))

LeEco Le 2

1546 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797))

Geekbench - Multi-core

Zopo Speed 8

5456 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797), cores: 10)

ZTE Axon 7

5455 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996, cores: 4)

nubia Z11

5430 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996, cores: 4)

Xiaomi Mi A2

5373 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus, cores: 8)

LeEco Le 2

5143 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797), cores: 10)

LeEco Le Max2

5103 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996, cores: 4)

Nokia X6

4933 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 636, cores: 8)

Xiaomi Mi 5 Standard Edition

4821 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996, cores: 4)

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 16GB

4558 (MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797), cores: 10)

Elephone S8

4548 (MediaTek Helio X25 (MT6797T), cores: 10)

Alldocube M8

4504 (MediaTek Helio X27 (MT6797X), cores: 10)

UMIDIGI Z Pro

4492 (MediaTek Helio X27 (MT6797X), cores: 10)

Xiaomi Redmi S2

4412 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 MSM8953, cores: 8)

Xiaomi Mi MIX

4388 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 MSM8996 Pro, cores: 4)

Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus

4375 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 MSM8996 Pro, cores: 4)

OnePlus 3T

4375 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 MSM8996 Pro, cores: 4)

nubia Z17 mini Standard Edition

4371 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 MSM8976, cores: 8)

Vernee Apollo

4343 (MediaTek Helio X25 (MT6797T), cores: 10)

Xiaomi Mi Max 2

4330 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 MSM8953, cores: 8)

Xiaomi Mi 5X

4310 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 MSM8953, cores: 8)

LeEco Le Pro 3 Elite

4270 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996, cores: 4)

Battery

Alldocube M8 is equipped with a 5500 mAh battery paired with a 5V/2A charger. The charger was placed outside the box and after contacting Alldocube we received an answer that it is too big to fit the default box in the package. All battery tests we run on the devices we review are developed by us and performed with the screen of the device being calibrated to 200 cd/m2. Battery saving features are disabled. There's no data about the battery temperature during the tests.

Charging (3 hours and 55 minutes)

Our Alldocube M8 review unit needed 3 hours and 55 minutes to charge its 5500 mAh battery from 0% to 100%. The charging process draws an interesting curve. It begins with a steady pace maintained until the battery gains 80% of its capacity. This happens 2 hours and 21 minutes from the start. After that, the charging speed drops significantly and it takes 1 hour and 31 minutes for the battery to gain another 14% of its capacity to 94%. Immediately after that, the charging speed skyrockets and the last 6% are charged in 3 minutes.

Browsing (4 hours and 59 minutes)

The result from the browsing battery life is 4 hours and 59 minutes. The discharging process maintains a steady speed from the start until the battery drops to 12%. At that point, the charge drops to 0 in 6 minutes.

Primary camera photos

Alldocube M8 is equipped with a 5MP OmniVision OV5648 rear camera with a LED flash. This sensor has been often used by tablets and budget smartphones 4-5 years ago. The camera takes photos with a resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels and 1080p videos at 15 fps. For the selfie snapper on the front, the manufacturer uses a 2MP GalaxyCore GC2385 sensor. It shoots photos with a resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels and 480p videos at 30 fps interpolated to 1080p. Here are some photo samples from the rear camera:

The information on this website is provided on "as is, as available basis" without warranty of any kind. DeviceSpecifications is not responsible for any omissions, inaccuracies or other errors in the information it publishes. All warranties with respect to this information are disclaimed. Reproduction of any part of this website in its entirety or partially or in any form or medium without prior written permission is prohibited. The trademarks, marques and logos of the manufacturers of devices, software, hardware, etc. are the property of their respective owners.